Scandals

Willacy County is still feeling the effects of an immigrant prisoner uprising that destroyed the privately operated Willacy County Correctional Center in February. The prison, run by Management & Training Corporation (MTC), was closed due to significant structural damage causing the relocation of 2,500 federal prisoners and nearly 400 employee layoffs.

Willacy County Correctional Center

According to recent reports, the county received about $4 milion in insurance money, but county officials say the money won't last long. Currently, the money is being divided four ways — clean up from the uprising, county administration costs, losses to MTC, and payments toward the $9 million bond to pay for the jail.

In the meantime, hundreds in the community are struggling financially. One employee who was laid off in March said her unemployment compensation is insufficient and she is taking out a loan to help cover her bills.

The county aims to get the facility up and running again, but the insurance money may not last. And, if the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) decides against renewing the contract, the county could face a big blow to their income.

Eva Bermea, who was working for GEO as a recreational specialist at Big Spring, was found guilty of smuggling tobacco and creatine to inmate Jonas Cruz, 34, who was selling the products to other inmates. Bermea, 42, was sentenced to three years probation, eight months of which she will serve under house arrest. Cruz had two years added to his 17-year sentence for methamphetamine distribution, to be served concurrently.

Cruz and Bermea also pleaded guilty to bribery of public officials and aiding and abetting.

The third party, Kami Nicole Bennet, 32, who recieved money from Cruz’s brother and packaged the contraband, was sentenced to one year probation after pleading guilty to misprision of a felony and superseding information.

Big Spring Correctional Center is a "Criminal Alien Requirement" prison for immigrants contracted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to for-profit, private prison corporation the GEO Group. Big Spring was recently in the news and was covered here by Texas Prison Bidn'ess blogger Marlon Saucedo over complaints from prisoners and their families about a lack of medical care in the prison.

KFYO reports that neither the BOP nor GEO Group have returned their reporter's calls.

BOP operates 12 CAR prisons, all of which are contracted out to private prison companies. As of earlier this year, there were 13 CAR prisons, but an inmate uprising at the Willacy County Correctional Center left the facility uninhabitable and BOP canceled that contract with Management and Training Corporation (MTC) and moved the prisoners to other facilities around the country.

An Austin-based attorney and paralegal team claims that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has banned the paralegal from entering the Karnes County Residential Center after The Texas Observer published an article she wrote that was critical of the family detention center.

Paralegal and former Observer intern Victoria Rossi told the Observer that she thinks the timing of her banishment from working as a paralegal at the Karnes family detention center is suspicious because it comes after she published an article that detailed what she saw inside Karnes.

“I’m hoping it’s just a technical error, but the timing of it, I worry that it’s reactive to the article,” Rossi said.

The story begins in October 2014, when, Raymond submitted a security clearance application for Rossi which was approved by ICE. From then on, Rossi says she faxed the required intent-to-visit notices to Karnes, 24 hours in advance to any future visit to the facility.

Then, on January 15, Rossi arrived at the Karnes facility where officers stopped her from entering and questioned her about the purpose of her visit.

ICE officials told Raymond that there had been a clerical error on Rossi’s initial application and that Rossi only had permission to work in the facility as an interpreter, not as a paralegal.

Rossi and Raymond decided to reapply for paralegal access.

After completing a lengthy re-application for clearance process, Rossi and Raymond were denied once again on March 23. This time, the letter received from ICE gave no reason except that Rossi could not enter, “in the capacity of a paralegal.”

Rossi’s article for The Observer was published in February and, described her experience working at the Karnes family detention center:

We’d driven to Karnes because a family we represent—Reza and her daughters, Julie and Dalia (not their real names)—was scheduled to be released that night. Though a judge had set their bond impossibly high—impossible, that is, for an impoverished Honduran woman—we’d cobbled together the funds from individual donations and the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. An $8,000 money order had been deposited at an ICE office in San Antonio that morning. Now it was 3 p.m.; if everything went smoothly, Reza, Julie and Dalia would be free by nightfall.

Growing up, I always heard that immigrants came to this country “in search of better lives,” for “more opportunities.” They wanted to make money and to educate their kids, I was told. But the people in Karnes are scared. They’re running from something. And they’re not running just to the United States. According to the U.N., asylum applications to countries surrounding violence-torn El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemalaincreased by 712 percent between 2008 and 2013. What happened on the U.S. border last summer was not, as some have said, an immigration crisis. It was a refugee crisis.

I could understand Virginia’s urge to see Reza. Karnes seemed like the sort of place where things could go wrong. Phones weren’t allowed past the metal detectors. There is no Internet access inside, and all the walkways and buzzers and antechambers separating the receptionist’s desk from the visiting area meant that communication with the outside world was difficult.

The Karnes detention center was at the center of two hunger strikes this month. In the first,78 women refused to eat or use any services in the facility from March 31 to April 4. Ten days later, 10 women restarted the fast to protest their detention.

This isn’t the first time that ICE has been accused to retaliating against legal service providers. Raymond also told truth-out.org that another paralegal, RAICES' Johana De Leon, was banned from working inside Karnes after ICE accused her of organizing the hunger strike.

The Karnes facility holds 532 beds and cribs for refugee women and children and is operated by GEO Group.

Last week plans for GEO Care/Correct Care Recovery Solutions' to take over the Terrell State Hospital were scrapped after the release of a state audit. This effort was a privatization scheme that was part of GEO Care's, a subsidiary of private prison company GEO Group, expansion ambitions into state hospital and civil commitment centers. This decision was instigated by a large contracting scandal in the state and a critical state audit.

Last week, the State Auditor’s Office released a seething audit of Texas’ Health and Human Service Commission’s (HHSC) attempt to privatize Terrell State Hospital last year. The audit acknowledges that some procurement processes were followed. Yet, significant breaches to protocol occurred. According to the audit “the Health and Human Services Commission (Commission) did not ensure that its decision to tentatively award a contract to GEO Care, LLC to manage selected operations at Terrell State Hospital provided the best value to the State. The Commission and the Department of State Health Services (Department) did not fully comply with the Commission’s contract planning and procurement processes.”

The results of the audit included a list of mishaps on the part of HHSC. This included failure to conduct a preliminary needs assessment and a cost-benefit-analysis, tardy purchase requisitions, and failure to adequately verify the background, qualifications, and experiences of vendors. In addition, there were a number of discrepancies in the bid evaluation process including inconsistencies in scoring, lack of a minimum qualifying score, and failure to receive non-disclosure agreements prior to negotiations.

In 2012, Texas Department of State Health Services attempted to offer a contract with GEO Care to operate the Kerrville State Hospital. In the end, Commissioner Dr. David Lakey rejected GEO Care’s bid to privatize the Kerrville State Hospital on the grounds that savings in the proposal were achieved “primarily through reductions in staffing and benefits to a degree that would put both our patients and the State of Texas at risk.” Even with this conclusion, HHSC chose to move forward with solicitation to privatize Terrell State Hospital in 2014. Nevertheless, the audit has rendered current attempts to privatize Terrell State Hospital momentarily dead.